Gaddafi's son Saadi abandons his lions
Gaddafi's son leaves his prized animals behind in zoo
Tripoli: Until a month ago the location of Muammar Gaddafi's son Saadi wasn't a mystery at all. Every day Saadi would drive with a couple of low-key bodyguards to Tripoli's zoo.
The zoo — located right next to Gaddafi's heavily protected Bab Al Aziziya complex — was closed to ordinary visitors. But for Saadi it was always open.
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Saadi, Gaddafi's third son, would come to visit his favourite animals: the lions. Nine of the zoo's 18 lions belonged to him personally; he was usually found crouching in front of their spacious enclosure.
As Libya's revolutionaries advanced inexorably towards Tripoli, Saadi reassured the zoo's director there was nothing to worry about. "He told me: ‘It's OK. The situation is normal'," said Dr Abdul Fatah Hosni, the zoo's director.
Hosni — a supporter of Libya's revolution — said he last saw Saadi four weeks ago. Instead of turning up with just one or two bodyguards, Saadi arrived in a heavily protected convoy. After that he vanished. His whereabouts are unknown. Like most of the Gaddafi family, and other senior figures from the fallen regime, he seems to have melted away.
Mohammad, another of Gaddafi's sons, and his children were occasional visitors to the zoo, Hosni said.
Hurried departure
Two leading members of the regime, Saif Al Islam and government spokesman Moussa Ebrahim, were spotted for the last time at Tripoli's Rixos hotel late last Monday. But other Gaddafi relatives were probably never there. According to revolutionaries now guarding the Rixos, Ebrahim left in a hurry, abandoning many of his possessions as the fighting came nearer, in a desperate scramble to escape.
Ebrahim's room — 2123 on the ground floor — gave the impression that he had been given 30 seconds to pack. Papers, a green Gaddafi flag, an award from Al Fateh University lay abandoned on the floor; in the bathroom Ebrahim had left his toothpaste.
A business card from Maxim Maksimov, the Russian charge d'affaires in Tripoli, lay on a glass table. Ebrahim hadn't bothered either to take a sheaf of journalists' hotel bills.
